Comic Strips

Comic strip historian and pioneer Bill Blackbeard has died at age 84, it has been reported. Blackbeard had been in a nursing home for some years, and passed away on March 10th. As the outpourings of appreciations have shown, Blackbeard was, perhaps more than any other individual, responsible for the emergence of comic strips and (by extension) comic books as a legitimate source of art to be treasured and preserved on an institutional level.

After 107 entries, writer/tweeter Roger Ebert ha finally won The New Yorker's cartoon caption contest, Robert Mankoff reports. He also notes that it akes practice to make perfect:

Editorial cartoonist Mike Keefe of the Denver Post has won this year's Pulizter Prize for cartooning. He won the 2011 John Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition earlier this year so he is on a roll. His home paper reacts here. A complete list of winners can be found here.

Wow! Lots of great books coming out this month!

Before she was a much admired editor at DC and Vertigo, Joan Hilty was a talented cartoonist, and somehow she managed to keep both running for nearly a decade. She's just launched JoanHilty.net to showcase all her skills. The site includes new episodes of her strip Bitter Girl, excerpt above.

In the spirit of Cthulhu Family Circus and other great remixes, Jon L. and Chris D. present Sheen Family Circus. In case you have been in Shaolin seclusion this week, actor Charlie Sheen has been on a manic-phase media run with a series of hyperventilated interviews highlighting our new found media ability to watch famous people pathetically and tragically act out right in front of us. As distasteful as it all is...these quotes are comedy gold.

It's the first ever Peanuts graphic novel, Charlie Brown! Last week people were speculating over the announcement that kaboom! -- BOOM! Studios' new all-ages comics imprint -- would be publishing something Peanuts-related. Was it strips reprints? Comic book reprints? What? The reality is that it's an ALL NEW adaptation of a new Peanuts animated movie, Happiness Is a Warm Blanket Charlie Brown, which Warners Home Video is releasing in March.

...unless you read old comic strips. Fantagraphics' Floyd Gottfredson reprint project was a big news item at last year's San Diego, and you can bet that the book (due on April 15th) will get people talking some more. FBI released a pdf of the promo materials and here's a sneak peek.

United Media, the syndicate behind such beloved comic strips as Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy (above) and scores of other great strips of the past, is outsourcing its comics syndication business to Universal Uclick, according to a press release. In syndication terms, this is as if DC suddenly outsourced its publishing to Marvel. New York-based United and the similarly named but Kansas City-based Universal uClick -- which is owned by publisher Andrews McMeel, were long two of the three biggest comics syndicates -- King Features is the third -- and oversaw the immensely lucrative and popular icons of the comics pages for decades.

Tarpé Mills is a name well known to comics historians, not only as one of the best of the female cartoonists of the war years, but as the creator and artist of Miss Fury, one of the first successful superheroine characters, which ran for nearly a decade as a sunday newspaper strip. It was a lively blend of outre characters, adventure and naughtiness. This April Dean Mullaney's Library of American Comics is reprinting the best of the strips in a deluxe volume complete with an introduction by comics historian Trina Robbins. Mullaney provided a desception of the volume and this preview for our Anniversary week:

Variety confirms that everyone's favorite orphan is getting a reboot courtesy if Will Smith's production company, with daughter Willow Smith set to star. Smith's production company is teaming with Jay-Z to form a new movie-making joint venture and ANNIE is on the list.

By Jen Vaughn -- What do you do with a man with a wild mind of his own and a pair of drawing hands that just won't quit? You make him KING.

James Kochalka is the one of forerunners of autobiographical diary comics with his syndicated comic, American Elf, which is also available online and began way back in October, 1998. He is also the creator of other excellent comics like irreverent SuperF*ckers and children's books like the Johnny Boo series and most recently, Dragon Puncher. His comics are published by Portland-based comics publisher, Top Shelf.